Wednesday, June 13. 2012

Only 7 days left! A week from today the exhibition Kirunatopia / In the Shadow of the Future will be opened at Bildmuseet in Umeå! In the meantime enjoy reading our next interview with Lina Issa about her happening in Kiruna involving 250 inhabitants and its effects on the memory of the town.

Your works quite often take the form of social and participatory events. The two videos in Kirunatopia were shot during a happening you arranged in May 2011. You gathered hundreds of people living in Kiruna to walk along the first estimated ‘crack line’ of the city. What is the background of this work?

The idea started after speaking to a number of people in Kiruna and realising that many of them seemed to have grown indifferent and numb to their own situation and future, and that of the city. They speak of the crack(s) that the mine will create in the city as something abstract and far from where they are or will be when it happens. On the other hand, in all of their reports the city planners and LKAB engineers have visualised a couple of red lines marking the locations of the cracks and estimate them arising in the near future and at a short distance from the population.

Besides that, among all the financial and practical discussions about moving the city, there has been very little talk about the social and emotional consequences of the move. So I asked myself: What would it mean to physically confront the crack? What does the crack symbolise? Will it cause a fissure in the memory and history of the town? Will it divide people? Will it empower some and marginalise or exclude others?

Thinking of Tug of War, I imagined the people shifting between an individual and a collective body, making this ‘abstract’ image of the crack physically palpable in their participation in the happening. I imagined them standing there, looking at it (a latent presence/absence) and being an active, conscious and physical part of the changing ‘topography’ of their town and activating its memory.

In one of your earlier projects, What if, if I take your place?, you ‘replaced’ participants in one or more situations in their lives. You lived their life for periods ranging from an hour to a couple of days. Displacement and creating situations for transgression of barriers seems to be a reoccurring theme in your work.

Questions of replacement - What if I take your place? Can I feel what you feel? - do indeed recur throughout my practice. Kirunatopia placed me in Kiruna as an artist and as a foreigner. It is a city of multiple identities and realities, a city experiencing a form of dislocation and displacement in not only its geography, but also in its history, memory and identity. So in this project I again challenged my position as a migrant, and the possibility of displacing myself and my set of references, whether they be cultural, political, social, geographical or physical. I looked for a form where displacement could be experienced as generative, instead of painful and degenerative, and where the displaced can shape the narratives of their displacement as subjects rather than objects.

My project has taken the form of a social event and a happening, a ‘tug of war’. I literally placed the 250 participants of the happening and myself in a situation where relations, memories, associations and reflections could unfold. I tried to create conditions for imagined and real experiences and narratives to emerge and be shared.

The happening in Kiruna can almost be seen as an orchestration of a collective memory, a monument for and by the community. What do you hope the participants will carry with them from that day?

My 'Kirunatopia' here was to find a form where a meaningful, open and touching encounter could happen between me, the people of Kiruna, the place and an artistic vision/contribution. The participants of the happening experienced it as a productive and inspiring form to deal with their situation and address its social and emotional aspects when there was little room for that in the public debate. They experienced it as a positive and playful form of dealing with their confusion and anxiety towards the consequences of dislocation.

The happening contextualises itself within the complex tensions and narratives of the past, present and future of the city. It takes place on a symbolic geographical spot where no one will be able to stand in the future, and where no physical trace will be seen of the people’s past presence. The memory of the place will only be embodied in those who have lived there, and I hope that the happening has offered the inhabitants of Kiruna a chance to reflect on the process of separation from a part of themselves, and that it has activated the power of embodied and collective memory.

Coming up: Lara Almarcegui about Toullavaara – the empty territory where Kiruna will be moved…

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About the Blog

This blog is part of the project Kirunatopia. It serves as a platform for the participating artists to present their ongoing working process – independent of the geographical remoteness of Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden and center of the project. The blog provides insights into different positions, art works and exhibitions emerging from the diverse and transforming location of Kiruna in Lapland; it also allows for comments and thus audience participation. more...

About Kirunatopia

Kirunatopia is a research, residency and exhibition project initiated and managed by the Goethe-Institut Schweden and its collaborating partners Umeå University, Bildmuseet in Umeå and Konsthall C in Stockholm. A group of international artists have been invited to work and do research on site, in Kiruna, in relation to issues that are specific to the area. more...

Short Guide Dresden

In our short guide are texts to the works of the artists and some background information on the LAKOMA – Archive of Lusatia, that includes documentary material on opencast mining, the vanished places in Lusatia and historical protests. Download Shortguide